97 Pub Quiz Questions [6 Rounds, Answers, Tie-Breaker]
97 pub quiz questions across six rounds, picture, music, and tie-breakers. Answers and stump explainers included. Play free on LearnClash.
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The modern pub quiz was born in 1976 when Sharon Burns and Tom Porter launched 32 teams across three southern-England leagues to fill slow pub nights.
These 97 pub quiz questions and answers follow the 6-round format those leagues codified. Six spoken rounds cover General Knowledge, History, Geography, Music, Film & TV, and Food & Drink. A picture round, a music round, and tie-breakers round it out. The format now runs at 800+ weekly Geeks Who Drink events in the US, according to the company’s bar-owner page, and at thousands of UK venues. It holds up equally well as a pub trivia template or a quiz night pack.
Read straight through to run a full quiz night. Skip to a round if you just want a quick fix. Or start a 3-minute pub-quiz duel on any topic in LearnClash, which generates pub-quiz-ready questions at every difficulty tier. If the room needs a lighter opener first, use ice breaker questions, this or that questions, or would you rather questions; remote groups can pull a fuller format from virtual team building games; themed pub nights tied to the calendar can pull from our 43 Father’s Day trivia questions for holiday play.
Quick Overview
LearnClash sorts pub quiz questions by round and by difficulty tier, so you can run a full night or pull a single round. These 97 questions split across nine rounds plus a tie-breaker. Easy ones warm the room. Hard ones decide who buys the next round. We weighted the pack toward medium and hard on purpose, since those are the questions that actually catch teams out.
| Round | Questions | Easy | Medium | Hard |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Round 1: General Knowledge | 15 | 4 | 7 | 4 |
| Round 2: History | 13 | 3 | 6 | 4 |
| Round 3: Geography | 13 | 2 | 5 | 6 |
| Round 4: Music | 13 | 3 | 6 | 4 |
| Round 5: Film & TV | 13 | 3 | 6 | 4 |
| Round 6: Food & Drink | 13 | 3 | 6 | 4 |
| Picture Round | 5 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
| Music Round: Intros & Lyrics | 5 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
| Tie-Breaker | 7 | 0 | 0 | 7 |
| Total | 97 | 20 | 42 | 35 |
Figure 1: The 97 questions span 9 rounds. Difficulty is weighted toward medium and hard.
How a Pub Quiz Works: The 6-Round Format
A pub quiz is a timed team trivia contest run across six spoken rounds plus a picture round, a music round, and a tie-breaker. LearnClash mirrors this structure. Each topic pack covers a broad parent subject, difficulty tiers rotate Easy to Hard, and the 18-question duel gives you a compressed version of a full pub quiz night.
Figure 2: The 6-round format Burns and Porter codified, still in use at most UK pubs today.
Here is the format Burns and Porter codified, and the one Geeks Who Drink, King Trivia, and most UK pub leagues still run. You will spot it in nearly every “best pub quiz questions” list online. LearnClash builds most of its pub trivia questions on the same skeleton.
- Six spoken rounds, 10-15 questions each, host reads aloud
- One picture round, printed sheets with logos, faces, or objects to identify
- One music round, short intro clips played over the PA
- One tie-breaker, always phrased as a nearest-number question
The earliest pub quiz night on record dates to a 1946 Yorkshire pub. Burns and Porter formalised the structure 30 years later. They travelled England to pitch their leagues to breweries as a way to fill slow Tuesdays. By the 1990s the format had jumped the Atlantic. Today Geeks Who Drink alone runs weekly quizzes at about 650 US venues, and our companion 67 bar trivia questions piece covers the US-native six-round format that grew out of the Geeks Who Drink and King Trivia leagues. For workplace play, our team-building trivia guide adapts the same 6-to-8 round shape into 73 office-safe questions with a remote-async mode. For warm-up rounds with no factual answer key, our 211 this or that questions set runs as binary-choice prompts with real LearnClash player split-rates.
Across the six spoken rounds, General Knowledge plays as the warm-up while Food & Drink and Geography tend to be the stumpers that decide the leaderboard.
Round 1: General Knowledge
General Knowledge opens the night for a reason. It warms the room, rewards breadth, and sets a baseline before the themed rounds narrow the field. On LearnClash, the General Knowledge pack is where players misjudge themselves most. They think these answers are easy. Then the room goes quiet.
Figure 2: Round 1 opens the night with broad-reach general knowledge questions designed to warm the room.
Duel me on general knowledge →
1. How many months of the year have 28 days? (Easy)
Answer: All 12.
Every month has at least 28 days. But the question is built to make you say “one,” since February is the only month with exactly 28 and no more. A classic opening trap.
2. What is the only letter that does not appear in any US state name? (Medium)
Answer: Q.
Every other letter turns up in at least one of the 50 state names. Z is rarest (Arizona). X is close behind (Texas, New Mexico). Q gets nothing at all.
3. Which country has a non-rectangular national flag? (Medium)
Answer: Nepal.
Nepal’s flag is a pair of stacked triangular pennants, symbolising the Himalayas and Hinduism-Buddhism duality. Every other sovereign flag on Earth is rectangular. Bhutan comes close with dragon artwork but keeps a rectangular shape.
4. What percentage of all species that ever lived are now extinct? (Medium)
Answer: About 99%.
Estimates run from 99.0% to 99.9%. The number you hear most often is over 99%. Most of those extinctions were not mass events but slow species turnover.
5. Which country has the most time zones? (Hard)
Answer: France, with 12.
Not Russia, which has 11. France’s overseas departments and territories span the globe, from French Polynesia to Wallis and Futuna to Saint Pierre and Miquelon. The UK is second with 9 time zones thanks to its own overseas territories.
6. How many hearts does an octopus have? (Easy)
Answer: Three.
Two pump blood through the gills. One pumps blood through the rest of the body. When an octopus swims, the main heart actually stops beating, which is why octopuses prefer to crawl.
7. What is the chemical symbol for potassium? (Medium)
Answer: K.
K comes from the Latin kalium, itself from Arabic al-qalyah (plant ashes). Several element symbols follow this pattern: sodium is Na (natrium), iron is Fe (ferrum), lead is Pb (plumbum).
8. What is the longest English word you can type using only the top row of a QWERTY keyboard? (Hard)
Answer: “Typewriter.”
Ten letters, all on the top row (Q, W, E, R, T, Y, U, I, O, P). Legend says the keyboard layout was exactly engineered so salespeople could demo the machine by typing the word “typewriter” fluently.
9. What is the only bird that can fly backwards? (Easy)
Answer: The hummingbird.
A hummingbird’s wings beat in a figure-of-eight pattern and can rotate at the shoulder joint, which allows sustained backward, upward, and hovering flight. No other bird can do this.
10. Which planet is known as both the Morning Star and the Evening Star? (Medium)
Answer: Venus.
Ancient cultures assumed they were two different objects. Venus is the brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon. It shows as the Evening Star when it trails the Sun and the Morning Star when it leads the Sun.
11. Which mammal cannot jump? (Medium)
Answer: The elephant.
An adult elephant is too heavy for its leg bones and joint mechanics to support all-four-off-the-ground motion. It can run, but never with all feet airborne. Sloths, hippos, and rhinos also cannot jump, but the elephant is the classic answer.
12. Which planet has the shortest day? (Hard)
Answer: Jupiter.
Jupiter rotates once every 9 hours and 55 minutes. Gut picks Mercury because it is closest to the Sun, but Mercury’s day is actually 59 Earth days long. For more space surprises, see our 37 space trivia questions.
13. In Morse code, what letter does dot-dash-dot-dot (·−··) represent? (Hard)
Answer: L.
The Morse alphabet is short for common letters and long for rare ones. E is a single dot. T is a single dash. L runs dot-dash-dot-dot, a four-signal sequence that shows up surprisingly often in British radio transmissions during the Second World War.
14. How many bones does a newborn baby have? (Easy)
Answer: About 300.
Adults have 206. Many of a baby’s bones, especially the skull plates, fuse together during growth. The final count is reached around age 25.
15. What is the rarest ABO blood type? (Easy)
Answer: AB negative.
Roughly 0.6% of the global population has AB negative blood. O positive is the most common at about 38%. AB negative is also one of the most universally useful plasma donors.
Round 2: History
History separates good teams from great ones. Dates look trivial. They hide traps. LearnClash builds history questions that make you double-check what you think you remember, because half-remembered dates lose more quizzes than missing knowledge does.
Figure 3: Round 2 rewards precise dates and names over general impressions.
16. How long was the Hundred Years’ War? (Medium)
Answer: 116 years.
From 1337 to 1453. The war lasted more than a century but was given a round-number name for symmetry. It also was not a single continuous war but a series of conflicts across generations.
17. How many of Henry VIII’s six wives were actually his wife under English law? (Hard)
Answer: Three.
The other three marriages were annulled by the Church or by Parliament, meaning they were legally treated as if they had never happened. The three who stayed wives in law were Jane Seymour (died), Anne of Cleves (divorced but not annulled in standard readings), and Catherine Parr (outlived him). Most pub quiz hosts accept “three” as the trick answer and “six” as the straight answer.
18. What was Amazon’s original company name? (Medium)
Answer: Cadabra.
Jeff Bezos registered the company in 1994 with the name “Cadabra.” A lawyer hearing “Cadabra” over the phone misheard it as “cadaver.” Bezos changed it to Amazon, which also started with A (helpful in early alphabetised web listings) and evoked scale.
19. Which of the seven ancient wonders of the world is still standing? (Easy)
Answer: The Great Pyramid of Giza.
It is the oldest of the seven and the only survivor. The Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the rest were destroyed by earthquakes, fires, or time.
20. Who was the last Tsar of Russia? (Easy)
Answer: Nicholas II.
He abdicated in March 1917 during the February Revolution and was executed with his family in July 1918 at Yekaterinburg.
21. Which US state was the first to ratify the Constitution? (Medium)
Answer: Delaware.
Delaware ratified on 7 December 1787, which is why it is nicknamed “The First State.” Pennsylvania ratified five days later.
22. What ship did Charles Darwin sail on during his 1831 voyage? (Easy)
Answer: HMS Beagle.
The voyage lasted nearly five years and supplied the observations that became On the Origin of Species in 1859.
23. Who wrote the Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx? (Easy)
Answer: Friedrich Engels.
The pair published in London in 1848. Engels also edited the second and third volumes of Das Kapital from Marx’s notes after Marx’s death.
24. In what year did the Berlin Wall fall? (Easy)
Answer: 1989.
The wall was physically breached on 9 November 1989. German reunification followed in 1990. The common trap is to confuse the two years. The wall fell in 1989.
25. Which country was the first to grant women the right to vote? (Hard)
Answer: New Zealand.
New Zealand granted women’s suffrage in 1893. Australia followed in 1902, Finland in 1906. The United States did not grant nationwide women’s suffrage until the 19th Amendment in 1920.
26. Oxford University began teaching in 1096. Which civilisation was founded AFTER Oxford existed? (Hard)
Answer: The Aztec Empire.
The Aztec capital Tenochtitlan was founded in 1325. Oxford’s first college, University College, opened in 1249. The Aztec Empire feels ancient but is actually two centuries younger than the English university. Your brain builds timelines from vibes.
27. Who ruled England for just 9 days in 1553? (Hard)
Answer: Lady Jane Grey.
She was proclaimed Queen on 10 July 1553 and deposed on 19 July when Mary I was proclaimed. She was executed the following February. Her reign is disputed by some historians because she was never crowned.
28. In what city was John F. Kennedy assassinated? (Easy)
Answer: Dallas, Texas.
On 22 November 1963. The assassination was the fourth of a US president in office.
Round 3: Geography
Geography ranks second-hardest in a typical pub quiz, behind only the tie-breakers. The map in your head quietly lies. That is why geography trips up teams that breezed through the warm-up. LearnClash leans into the lie with questions that hinge on where places actually sit, not where you assume they do.
Figure 4: Round 3 tests mental maps that your brain built from flat projections.
29. What is the largest country in the world by area? (Easy)
Answer: Russia.
Roughly 17.1 million km². Canada is second at about 10 million km². Russia’s land area is nearly double Canada’s.
30. Which is further west: Reno, Nevada or Los Angeles? (Hard)
Answer: Reno.
Reno sits at 119.8°W longitude. Los Angeles is at 118.2°W. Nevada’s western edge curves further west than southern California’s coast at those latitudes. The Sierra Nevada range hides this, which is why almost everyone gets it wrong.
31. What is the driest continent on Earth? (Hard)
Answer: Antarctica.
Parts of the Antarctic interior receive less than 50mm of precipitation a year. That makes them a desert by the scientific definition. The Sahara actually gets more rain than central Antarctica.
32. How many countries does the equator pass through? (Hard)
Answer: 13.
Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, São Tomé and Príncipe, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Maldives, Indonesia, Kiribati. The Maldives and Kiribati are often forgotten because they are island nations.
33. What country makes Panama hats? (Medium)
Answer: Ecuador.
Ecuador wove the hat for centuries, then shipped it through the Panama Canal for export. The route stuck to the name instead of the origin. It is also one of the most Google-cheatable trick questions going, which is why sharp hosts warn “no phones” before they read it out.
34. What is the only sea on Earth with no coastline? (Hard)
Answer: The Sargasso Sea.
It is bounded by four ocean currents (the Gulf Stream, North Atlantic, Canary, and North Atlantic Equatorial currents) rather than by land. It sits in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean and is famous for its floating Sargassum seaweed.
35. Which African country has the most pyramids? (Medium)
Answer: Sudan.
Sudan has around 250 pyramids, roughly double Egypt’s 130. The Nubian pyramids of the Kingdom of Kush are smaller and steeper-sided than their Egyptian counterparts.
36. What is the smallest country in the world by area? (Easy)
Answer: Vatican City.
About 0.49 km². It is an independent enclave within Rome, Italy, and the spiritual and administrative headquarters of the Catholic Church.
37. What is the deepest lake in the world? (Medium)
Answer: Lake Baikal.
In southern Siberia, Russia. Maximum depth 1,642m. It holds roughly 20% of the world’s unfrozen freshwater. It is also the oldest lake on Earth, at an estimated 25 million years.
38. Which country has no permanent natural rivers? (Hard)
Answer: Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia has wadis (seasonal stream beds) but no rivers that flow year-round. Its freshwater comes from desalinated seawater and aquifers. Several Gulf states share this trait.
39. New Zealand’s Ninety Mile Beach is how many miles long? (Hard)
Answer: 55 miles.
About 88 kilometres. The stretch of beach on the Aupouri Peninsula was misnamed by early settlers who measured it by the time it took cattle to walk (three days at 30 miles per day). The cattle walked slower than expected.
40. What is the largest country that has a land border with France? (Hard)
Answer: Brazil.
France shares a land border with Brazil through French Guiana, an overseas department of France. Brazil is larger than any of France’s European neighbours. A favourite “got you” in UK pub quizzes and the kind of question that also makes great true-or-false trivia fuel.
41. What is the longest continental mountain range in the world? (Medium)
Answer: The Andes.
About 7,000 km along the western coast of South America, passing through Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. The Rockies are just over half as long.
Round 4: Music
Music splits a pub quiz down generational lines. A table sure of itself on the 90s goes silent the second a 1960s question lands. LearnClash spreads its music pack across every decade for exactly this reason: the gaps live in the years you did not grow up with.
Figure 5: Round 4 catches more teams out than any other spoken round.
42. How many keys are on a standard grand piano? (Easy)
Answer: 88.
52 white keys and 36 black keys. The instrument’s range runs from A0 to C8, spanning more than seven octaves.
43. In what city was jazz born? (Easy)
Answer: New Orleans.
Late 19th and early 20th century. The style fused African rhythmic traditions, European harmony, and brass-band instrumentation that became widely available after the US Civil War.
44. Which composer was already deaf when he completed his Ninth in D minor? (Easy)
Answer: Ludwig van Beethoven.
He conducted the premiere in Vienna in 1824 and had to be turned around by a soloist to see the applause he could not hear.
45. What was the first music video ever played on MTV? (Medium)
Answer: “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles.
On 1 August 1981, at 12:01 AM. The song had been released two years earlier but gained its cultural weight through MTV’s launch.
46. Who wrote the MUSIC for Elton John’s hits? (Hard)
Answer: Elton John himself.
Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics. The partnership runs so deep that the credit blurs, and a table will hand Taupin the melodies too. He never touched them. Elton John composed the music for “Your Song,” “Rocket Man,” and “Tiny Dancer.” This is the question that ends more music rounds than any other on the list.
47. What was The Beatles’ longest song? (Medium)
Answer: “Revolution 9.”
8 minutes and 22 seconds from the 1968 White Album. It is an avant-garde sound collage rather than a conventional song, which is why many fans forget it.
48. Which artist holds the record for most cumulative weeks at #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100? (Hard)
Answer: Mariah Carey.
93 weeks total, spread across 19 #1 singles. Drake has more #1 songs but fewer weeks at the top. Different records, different trivia traps.
49. What was Bob Dylan’s birth name? (Medium)
Answer: Robert Zimmerman.
Robert Allen Zimmerman, born 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota. He adopted the stage name Bob Dylan after Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.
50. What band took their name from an AC/DC label on a sewing machine? (Medium)
Answer: AC/DC.
Malcolm and Angus Young, founders of the Australian band, saw the letters “AC/DC” (alternating current/direct current) on their sister’s sewing machine motor. They liked the image of power and electricity.
51. What is the best-selling album of all time? (Easy)
Answer: Thriller by Michael Jackson.
Certified sales over 70 million copies worldwide, though some industry estimates place it above 100 million. Released in 1982, the album held the #1 slot on the Billboard 200 for 37 weeks.
52. Which Pink Floyd album spent 741 consecutive weeks on the Billboard 200 chart? (Hard)
Answer: The Dark Side of the Moon.
Released in 1973. It re-enters the Billboard 200 regularly and has never truly left the consumer consciousness. Total global sales are estimated at 45 million copies.
53. What song did Frank Sinatra record in 1964 that became the first music played on the Moon? (Hard)
Answer: “Fly Me to the Moon.”
Buzz Aldrin played it on a portable cassette player during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. It became an accidental historical footnote. If you want a memory hack for music trivia like this, our guide on how to memorise facts faster covers spaced repetition of exactly this kind of isolated detail.
54. Which band appears on the Abbey Road album cover? (Easy)
Answer: The Beatles.
Photographed on 8 August 1969 at the zebra crossing outside EMI Studios on Abbey Road, London. The crossing is now a UK listed landmark.
Round 5: Film & TV
Film and TV catches even cinephiles out. Iconic quotes are almost always misquotes, and a confident table will defend a line nobody ever said. LearnClash builds its film and TV questions around those false memories, so the round rewards what you can verify over what you can recall.
Figure 6: Round 5 punishes confidence on famous quotes and box-office facts.
55. In Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, what exactly does Darth Vader say to Luke? (Hard)
Answer: “No. I am your father.”
Not “Luke, I am your father.” The actual line begins with “No” and does not use the name Luke at all. It is one of the most widely misquoted lines in film history.
56. What was the first feature-length animated film? (Medium)
Answer: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Released by Walt Disney Productions in 1937. There were earlier animated shorts and compilations, but Snow White was the first full-length cel-animated feature.
57. Which actor has won the most Academy Awards? (Medium)
Answer: Katharine Hepburn.
Four Best Actress Oscars, for Morning Glory (1933), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), and On Golden Pond (1981). No other actor has matched four wins in a lead acting category.
58. What was Pixar’s first feature film? (Easy)
Answer: Toy Story.
Released in November 1995. It was also the first entirely computer-animated feature film.
59. Which film was the first to gross $1 billion worldwide? (Hard)
Answer: Titanic.
James Cameron’s 1997 film passed $1 billion in March 1998. It held the all-time box office record for twelve years until Avatar (also Cameron) passed it in 2010.
60. In the US sitcom Friends, what is the name of Ross’s second wife? (Medium)
Answer: Emily.
Emily Waltham. They marry in London in Season 4 and divorce after Ross says “Rachel” at the altar.
61. Which sitcom character famously orders “a cup of coffee, two sugars, and a doughnut” at a New Jersey diner? (Hard)
Answer: Tony Soprano.
In HBO’s The Sopranos. The line became shorthand for the show’s blend of gangster tropes and suburban banality.
62. What was Gone With The Wind’s best-selling format before the 1939 film? (Medium)
Answer: A novel.
Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel sold more than a million copies in its first year and remains one of the best-selling American novels of all time.
63. Which 1994 film features a character who chases a $60 debt across Los Angeles? (Easy)
Answer: Pulp Fiction.
The debt plot is one of several overlapping storylines in Quentin Tarantino’s non-linear crime anthology. The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
64. Who directed Citizen Kane, widely cited as the greatest film ever made? (Medium)
Answer: Orson Welles.
Welles directed, co-wrote, produced, and starred in Citizen Kane (1941). He was 25 years old at the time. The film was largely unsuccessful on release and only gained critical consensus years later.
65. How many episodes of Seinfeld were produced? (Hard)
Answer: 180.
Over nine seasons, from 1989 to 1998. The finale, which aired on 14 May 1998, was watched by an estimated 76 million US viewers.
66. In what year did the first Doctor Who episode air? (Medium)
Answer: 1963.
On 23 November, the day after John F. Kennedy’s assassination. The BBC aired a repeat the following week because many viewers had missed the original broadcast.
67. What is the highest-grossing film of all time at the worldwide box office (unadjusted for inflation)? (Medium)
Answer: Avatar.
James Cameron’s 2009 film has grossed over $2.9 billion worldwide, including a 2022 re-release. Avengers: Endgame briefly held the record before Avatar’s re-release reclaimed it.
Round 6: Food & Drink
Food and drink is the round hosts save for last. It rewards real local knowledge and punishes anyone guessing from a restaurant menu. Half of these are trick questions wearing a friendly face. LearnClash keeps a food and drink pack stocked with the same kind of “wait, that is not what it sounds like” question.
Figure 7: Round 6 rewards local knowledge and punishes guesses drawn from restaurant menus.
68. What is the most consumed drink in the world after water? (Easy)
Answer: Tea.
Yes, not coffee. Global tea consumption exceeds 6 billion kilograms a year, driven by India, China, Turkey, and the UK. Coffee is a close second.
69. What country is the world’s largest exporter of coffee? (Medium)
Answer: Brazil.
Brazil produces and exports roughly one-third of the world’s coffee. Vietnam is a distant second. Colombia is third.
70. What is the primary ingredient in Japanese sake? (Easy)
Answer: Rice.
Sake is brewed from fermented rice, water, and koji mould. It is sometimes called “rice wine” in English but is closer to beer in its brewing process (starches converted to sugars before fermentation).
71. From which animal do we usually get “catgut” strings? (Hard)
Answer: Sheep or horses.
Not cats. Catgut is made from the intestines of sheep, goats, or horses. The name is a corruption of “kitgut” (kit being an old word for a small fiddle) or “catapult” (the bowstring material).
72. What is a camel’s-hair brush usually made of? (Hard)
Answer: Squirrel fur.
Not camel. The brush is named after Mr Camel, the British 18th-century brushmaker who spread the design. It has always used squirrel, goat, or pony hair. A classic pub quiz trick question.
73. In what country was ketchup first made? (Medium)
Answer: China.
Kê-tsiap, a fermented fish-sauce condiment, originated in 17th-century coastal China. British traders brought it home, swapped the fish for mushrooms or walnuts, and American cooks later substituted tomatoes in the 19th century.
74. Which fruit is the most consumed in the world? (Medium)
Answer: Tomato.
Yes, tomato is botanically a fruit. Global tomato consumption exceeds 180 million tonnes a year, driven by its role in sauces, pastes, and soups across most global cuisines. Bananas are second.
75. What spirit is the base of a Negroni cocktail? (Medium)
Answer: Gin.
Equal parts gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth. Invented in Florence, Italy, around 1919, when Count Camillo Negroni asked a bartender to strengthen his Americano by swapping soda water for gin.
76. What is the most expensive spice in the world by weight? (Medium)
Answer: Saffron.
Roughly $5,000-$10,000 per kilogram depending on grade. It takes about 150,000 Crocus sativus flowers to produce 1 kilogram of dried saffron, and each flower is harvested by hand.
77. Where was the first restaurant (in the modern sense) opened? (Hard)
Answer: Paris.
In 1765. A bouillon shop run by a Monsieur Boulanger is cited as the first establishment to offer menus, individual tables, and seated service, rather than a communal inn meal.
78. What is the main ingredient of Bombay duck? (Hard)
Answer: Fish.
Despite the name, Bombay duck is not a duck at all. It is a lizardfish native to the Arabian Sea, dried and salted as a condiment in Indian cuisine.
79. How many grapes are usually eaten at midnight on New Year’s Eve in Spain? (Easy)
Answer: Twelve.
One grape per strike of the midnight clock. Each grape buys you a month of good luck in the coming year. The tradition dates to the late 19th century, invented to help sell off a surplus grape harvest.
80. What is the official drink of Scotland? (Easy)
Answer: Irn-Bru.
Outsells Coca-Cola within Scotland. Irn-Bru has been produced by AG Barr since 1901 and is famously “made in Scotland from girders” per its long-running ad campaign.
Picture Round
The picture round breaks up the rhythm of spoken questions and tests a fully different kind of knowledge. Host hands out printed sheets with partially obscured logos, celebrity silhouettes, or landmark photos. And the picture round is where funny pub quiz questions land best, because a silly silhouette gets more laughs than a spoken one-liner. LearnClash does not replicate the visual format here, but each question below describes what the picture sheet usually shows.
Figure 8: The picture round tests visual recognition. LearnClash can host equivalent rounds through its any-topic question packs.
81. An apple silhouette with one bite taken out, black on white. Company? (Easy)
Answer: Apple Inc.
The bite was added by designer Rob Janoff in 1977 so viewers would not mistake the silhouette for a cherry at small sizes. The first-version logo from 1976, designed by Ronald Wayne, depicted Isaac Newton under a tree.
82. A partial swoosh in orange. Brand? (Medium)
Answer: Nike.
Carolyn Davidson designed the swoosh in 1971 and was paid $35. She later received Nike stock worth significantly more.
83. A silhouette of a tall, thin man with a bowler hat, holding a cane. Comedian? (Medium)
Answer: Charlie Chaplin.
His “Tramp” character first appeared in Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914) and became one of the most recognised silhouettes in film history.
84. A landmark photograph of two identical towers. City? (Hard)
Answer: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The Petronas Towers. They held the title of world’s tallest buildings from 1998 to 2004, when the Taipei 101 took the record.
85. A stylised logo of three interlocking rings with a fourth ring off to one side. Event? (Medium)
Answer: The Paralympic Games.
The three “agitos” (Latin for “I move”) replaced the five Olympic rings in 1994. The Paralympic logo uses red, blue, and green.
Music Round: Intros & Lyrics
The music round plays 10-15 second song intros or lyric snippets over the PA. Teams identify the song, artist, year, or all three. This round rewards teams with wide decade coverage. The LearnClash music topic pack covers every era from 1950s to 2020s.
Figure 9: The music round is a format built in 1976 to break the fatigue of pure spoken Q&A.
86. Song opens with a distinctive four-note bassline: “Dum, dum, dum, dum-dum.” Name the song. (Easy)
Answer: “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen.
1980, from The Game. The bassline is often cited as one of the most recognisable opening hooks in pop music.
87. Intro features the lyric “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?” Name the song and year. (Medium)
Answer: “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen, 1975.
From A Night at the Opera. Six minutes long, no chorus, and famously difficult to categorise. It spent nine weeks at #1 on the UK Singles Chart on first release.
88. A song begins with the words “Imagine there’s no heaven.” Artist? (Easy)
Answer: John Lennon.
Released 1971. The piano intro is one of the most recognisable in popular music.
89. A song opens: “Hello darkness, my old friend…” Duo? (Medium)
Answer: Simon & Garfunkel.
“The Sound of Silence,” released in 1964 and revitalised in 1965 after Columbia Records added electric instrumentation without the duo’s knowledge.
90. The intro is a haunting piano melody followed by “Is this the way?” Name the song. (Hard)
Answer: “Chandelier” by Sia.
From the 2014 album 1000 Forms of Fear. The song peaked at #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for four Grammy Awards.
Tie-Breaker Questions
Tie-breakers come out when two or more teams finish the main rounds level. The phrasing is the whole trick. They are always framed as nearest-number questions, because asking for an exact fact just produces another tie. Closest guess wins, over or under. So every host needs a bank of these ready before the night starts. LearnClash keeps a set of these classics on hand for hosts who want a built-in tie-breaker bank. Seven of our favourites.
Figure 10: Tie-breakers use nearest-number format because exact ties are rare and brutal.
91. To the nearest year, when was the Eiffel Tower completed? (Hard)
Answer: 1889.
Officially inaugurated on 31 March 1889 for the Exposition Universelle marking the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution.
92. To the nearest metre, how tall is Mount Everest above sea level? (Hard)
Answer: 8,849 metres.
The most recent joint Nepal-China survey in 2020 set the official height at 8,848.86 metres. Earlier surveys put it at 8,848 or 8,850.
93. To the nearest thousand, how many words are in the complete King James Bible? (Hard)
Answer: 783,137.
Round to 783,000. The Old Testament accounts for roughly 609,000 of those.
94. To the nearest year, in what year did the RMS Titanic sink? (Hard)
Answer: 1912.
On 14-15 April 1912, on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York. 1,517 passengers and crew died.
95. To the nearest pound, how much does the Statue of Liberty weigh in copper cladding alone? (Hard)
Answer: 62,000 pounds.
About 31 short tons of copper, rolled into sheets 3.2mm thick. The total weight of the statue including the iron interior framework is roughly 450,000 pounds.
96. To the nearest 10 million, what is the estimated human population of the world in April 2026? (Hard)
Answer: About 8,120,000,000.
The UN’s World Population Prospects 2024 projected the global population to pass 8.1 billion in 2025. April 2026 estimates converge around 8.12 billion.
97. To the nearest cent, what is the exchange rate of 1 GBP to 1 EUR as of 22 April 2026? (Hard)
Answer: Approximately €1.17.
The rate fluctuates within a few cents. Pub quiz tie-breakers on live currency values are controversial because the “correct” answer depends on which source and which timestamp the host picked. Hosts should publish their reference source up front.
How to Win a Pub Quiz: Team of 5 Strategy
Research on optimal pub quiz team size lands on five. Not four. Not six. The reason is half physical, half cognitive. Past seven, the people at the far end of the table cannot pass a note to the pen-holder fast enough to matter. Under four, you leave whole categories uncovered. LearnClash duels handle the solo version of this tradeoff through adaptive ELO matchmaking. At a pub, though, five wins.
Figure 11: A team of 5 covers the main categories while keeping everyone within pen-passing distance.
The team build that wins most often:
- One sports specialist: covers football, cricket, tennis, and US sports
- One history and literature specialist: Oxford-date-style questions and classic-book plots
- One music and pop culture specialist: covers Music Round and Film & TV
- One science and general-knowledge specialist: GK round’s science questions
- One current-events and geography specialist: the map-in-your-head expert
The last role, current events and geography, is the most underrated. Quiz setters love to sneak in questions about last year’s news, and “Which country has the most time zones” will stump any team without a geography mind.
Execution tips that hold up across a long quiz night:
- Defer to the most confident voice on 50/50 calls. Groupthink loses.
- Leave the tie-breaker to the team member with the best instinct for scale. Mathematical averaging rarely wins.
- Never re-check your answer once written. On 50/50 calls, your first instinct is usually the better one.
- Work the testing effect in the gap between rounds. While the host tallies, have someone fire two or three facts from the round just played back at the table. Recalling a fact under mild pressure locks it harder than re-reading the answer sheet ever would, which is why the test itself acts as study.
That between-rounds drill is not pub folklore. It is the exact mechanic LearnClash’s spaced repetition engine runs on, asking you to pull a fact back from memory right before you would otherwise forget it.
How to Host a Pub Quiz on LearnClash
LearnClash generates pub-quiz-ready questions on any topic at every difficulty tier. Pick a topic mix. Music, history, geography, and one surprise the regulars would never see coming. Set the difficulty per round, then either throw the questions up on a pub screen or print the made sets.
Figure 12: LearnClash generates pub-quiz-ready questions on any topic, including niche topics a pre-printed question pack cannot cover.
Three host modes:
- Solo-printed: generate and print 97 questions across nine rounds. Works for any pub that wants a zero-tech quiz night.
- Mixed live-plus-digital: host reads spoken rounds, teams use LearnClash on their phones for the picture and music rounds, app tracks scores.
- All-digital: every team plays ELO-matched 1v1 duels from a shared topic pack. The app scores automatically and the highest cumulative ELO wins the night.
| Host mode | Setup | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Solo-printed | Slowest | Zero-tech pubs |
| Mixed live + digital | Medium | Sharper picture and music rounds on phones |
| All-digital ELO duels | Fastest | Auto-scored, ranked competition |
The mixed mode balances tech and tradition: the host runs the spoken rounds while phones handle the picture and music rounds, where a sharp screen beats a printed handout under pub lighting.
Figure 13: The three host modes. Mixed mode balances speed and tradition best.
For more on the trivia questions pillar that powers the LearnClash topic packs, our cluster covers 31 topic sets from science to celebrity to kids. Or jump to our general knowledge trivia 43-question set. Duel a friend on a single LearnClash topic, or run a full pub quiz night with 97 questions. Both start from the same app.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many rounds are in a typical pub quiz?
A typical pub quiz runs six spoken rounds covering General Knowledge, History, Geography, Music, Film & TV, and Food & Drink, plus a picture round and a music round. Most venues run 30-50 questions total across 90-120 minutes, ending in a tie-breaker. This guide includes 97 pub quiz questions structured exactly this way, plus LearnClash-made variants you can run on any topic at any difficulty tier.
What is the optimal pub quiz team size?
Five. More than five means some members sit too far from the pen-holder to contribute; fewer than four leaves category gaps. A team of five covers sports, history, pop culture, science, and geography with one odd voice for 50/50 decisions. LearnClash plays 1v1 duels at all ELO tiers and covers the gaps when your team is missing a specialist.
Are pub quiz questions and trivia questions the same thing?
They overlap, but pub quiz questions carry UK heritage conventions: round-based structure, a picture round, a music round, a tie-breaker, and a slight lean toward General Knowledge plus food and drink content. US trivia questions and UK pub quiz questions both appear on LearnClash across 31 topic sets, so you can play either style from the same app.
Who invented the pub quiz?
Sharon Burns and Tom Porter launched the modern pub quiz in 1976, organising 32 teams across three southern-England leagues to fill slow pub nights. The format quickly spread across UK pubs and into Irish pub culture internationally. The earliest recorded quiz night predates them by three decades, in a 1946 Yorkshire pub, though Burns and Porter are credited with popularising the structure still used today.
Can you use LearnClash to host a pub quiz?
Yes. LearnClash generates pub-quiz-ready questions on any topic with difficulty tiers at every level. Hosts can choose a topic mix and run questions through the app's duel or practice mode. For solo hosting, print the made sets; for mixed live plus digital, split teams into 1v1 duels and let the app track accuracy.